Courage The | Cowardly Dog Ramses

Ramses tilted his head—once, like a bird, but wrong, like a statue remembering how to move—and then crumbled into a pyramid of fine gray ash. The locusts became leaves. The sky turned blue again.

“Return the slab,” they hummed, low and dry as a throatful of sand.

Courage looked at the house. Muriel was humming inside, unaware. Eustace was probably napping with his mask on. Neither of them had touched the slab. Neither of them remembered the traveling salesman who’d left it last Tuesday, carved with a curse in a language Courage could read perfectly—because fear, he’d long ago learned, is a universal translator. courage the cowardly dog ramses

He screamed. Ran in a tiny circle. Then, trembling whisker by whisker, he marched past the locusts, past the decaying god, and snatched the slab from the yard. He dragged it toward the road, nails squeaking on stone, while Ramses watched with eyes older than Egypt.

So Courage did what Courage always did.

Then the locusts came. Not buzzing— whispering .

Courage’s teeth chattered, but his legs wouldn't run. His eyes climbed the towering figure that now loomed behind the stone: Ramses, king of a dynasty of dread, his gilded beard cracked, his painted eyes weeping black resin. He didn't move so much as unfold —joints creaking like a sarcophagus lid. Ramses tilted his head—once, like a bird, but

The slab vanished into a waiting sandstorm.